Braided
by AdventureAddict
Summary: No one really knows why I braid my hair, because I won't tell anyone. Well, actually, that's not completely true. I know why. I suppose if you really want to know, you may as well sit down and listen.


The thing people don't warn you about with pain is that if you start experiencing enough of it, time slowly stops existing more and more. Sometimes you'll look at the clock and have to watch every second tick by just to be assured time is even moving at all, and sometimes you'll look over and realized that it somehow turned over to a new day when you weren't paying attention. This is, if you can remember what day it was, what day it's supposed to be, and all those other fun little timey tidbits. And sometimes, to cope with the pain, your brain just figured it would be a safer bet to exist anywhere else in your memories. So it just decides to pull up some memory it likes and live there for a while.

That was exactly what my brain was doing as I laid there in the Rockbell automail recovery room, waiting for the point when my brain would actually adjust to having a metal arm instead of a flesh one so I could just _get on with my goddamn life already_. My brain wasn't a particularly huge fan of this plan in particular and so decided it would just be better to go live in old memories instead.

"_Please_ let mommy braid your hair!" mom called out in a teasing voice as I ran through the house. She wiggled her fingers at me like she was going to tickle him and I played along, doing a squeal and giggle as I ran from her.

Eventually though, I always did end up letting her catch me anyway and pretended to sulk while she sat and put tiny braids in my hair. I would have never let her do it where anyone else could see because I knew braiding was something "girly"-after all, Winry did it with her dolls. But still, the feeling of my mom gently pulling and twisting and undoing and redoing the little braids in my bangs had a really soothing feeling to it. And she was my mom, too. No matter what tough act I wanted to put on with some of the other local boys, my mom was still my mom. I could never bear to think I'd made her sad just by refusing something as simple as braids.

"I always wished for a younger sister so I could braid her hair," my mom whispered in my ear. My eyes were closed, almost rocked to sleep from the motion of the braiding. "When that never happened I figured it would be fine, because someday I'd have a daughter and I'd braid her hair all the time."

I frowned and opened an eye at her, wondering if my mom secretly hated that I wasn't a girl. She smiled at me and touched a finger to my nose.

"Of course, then I had you and Alphonse, and I realized I didn't care whether I had sons or daughters as long as I had such wonderful children as you."

I grinned and closed my eyes again, pacified by mom saying I was basically the best kid in the whole world. Definitely better than any stinky girl. Blech.

"Still," mom sighed. "It really is a shame that you and Al won't let me dress you up in pretty dresses or grow out your hair."

Okay, that was too far! I yelped and stood up, putting my hands on my hips as I glared at her. "Mom! Then I'd look like a _girl_!"

"Excuse me, what's wrong with looking like a girl?" she said back with a smile. I groaned.

"It's fine for _you_ to look like a girl because you are one! But I'm a _boy!_"

"Well, what makes you so sure of that?" she said with a smirk.

"I-I-" I frowned as I stuttered and struggled for words. I hadn't even really thought to question any of this nonsense, because no one seemed to think I was anything other than a boy. Apparently except for my weird mom. "I just am, because I'm a boy!" I finally said, and stomped my foot.

"Yes, you are," she said, pulling me into a hug and petting my hair. "You're mommy's big strong man, aren't you?" I relaxed into the hug. There was just nowhere safer or better than wrapped up in one of mom's hugs.

There's this period of time after someone dies where you remember them, or dream about them, and when you pull out of it, you have to remember that they actually died. And that's actually almost worse in some ways, because it's like losing them fresh all over again. And this just keeps happening, and happening and happening. Hell, even decades later, you still might wake up from a dream and have to remind yourself that _Oh yeah, they're not here. That wasn't real. _It's like having your guts cut open all over again. You would think realizing someone is gone would lose its sting after the first hundred times or so, but it doesn't really. You just learn to recover from it faster. You just have to learn how to get up and keep standing on your feet even when your guts have been cut open for the hundredth time.

Anyway, that was what happened to me as I snapped away from the memory and back to the Rockbell recovery room. Back to the pain and the missing limbs, and the horrible guilt hanging over me like a boulder I could never fully get rid of. I leaned over the side of the bed and retched from the impact of it all at once. Mom was gone. Al had almost been gone and now was... because of me and my stupid... I retched again.

"Are you okay? I was in the other room and I heard..." I looked up and there was Winry. At least she was one thing from my life before and my life now that was actually the same. She glanced down at the metal bowl on the floor beside my bed. "I guess I'll clean that out for you. Are you okay, though?"

"I'm fine," I managed with my best attempt at a smile. I had a feeling it came across more like a grimace. "It's all part of the process, right?"

"Yeah," Winry said, side-eyeing me as she grabbed the bowl and went out of the room. I sighed and leaned back on the pillows. How the hell was I supposed to answer a question like "are you okay," anyway? I wasn't okay. I was the very definition of not okay in the slightest. But my body and even my mind were handling things as would be expected from everything I'd been through. Really, compared to a lot of average people, I was handling everything more than fine. I wasn't fine right now, but I was doing everything that could be done, and I was... Well, as good as could be expected. That seemed like "fine," even if I didn't feel it. Besides, why tell Winry I wasn't okay and make her worry if there was nothing that could be done?

I picked somewhat at the blankets while I waited. The worst part of everything was just how often I was left alone. Because I "needed to rest," theoretically. I felt like if I never rested again, it would be too soon. I was tired of being left alone with the quiet and my thoughts, and the horrible guilt that felt like it was going to crush all the air out of my lungs. This wasn't resting, not in the slightest. This was just torture. I needed to do something, anything to keep myself busy.

Winry came back in with a clean bowl, a glass of water, and a damp washcloth. I wasn't entirely sure of the point of the washcloth. I wasn't feverish, was I? Well, maybe I was and I didn't know it. I hardly knew anything about myself at this point.

"We're going to need to cut your hair soon," Winry said in a soft voice as she pet my hair away from my forehead so she could put the washcloth there. I jolted a little.

"No!"

It was pretty much an instinctive reaction, but it was so strong and vehement that Winry gave me a funny look, and I knew I had to somehow find words to explain what I was feeling. I swallowed a lump in my throat. The last person who had given me a haircut was my mom. I was a scientist, and I'd spent long enough studying how humans worked that I knew it only took maybe six weeks to grow a new layer of skin. But hair, hair stayed no matter how long you left it. My hair was the only part of me left that my mom had actually touched. Everything else had died and fallen away, but my hair still remembered her. Just like I remembered her. And I wasn't ready to let go of that yet.

Besides, it didn't feel like anyone would ever be able to cut my hair the same way she did.

"I, uh..." I slid my eyes away from Winry's gaze. I didn't even know how to talk about such sentimental, superstitious crap like that. It felt stupid for me to even be feeling the way I did anyway, and I didn't want her telling me I was stupid on top of my own feelings. "I was just, uh... I was thinking I might grow it out. It's a spiritual thing that alchemists do."

Winry rolled her eyes and snorted as she turned away from me to wring out the towel she had been dabbing at my forehead with. "So you're not only giving it up, you're going to do their weird rituals that don't even make sense?"

I huffed at her. "What would you know? You don't even get alchemy!"

"No, I don't!" she snapped, throwing the towel on the beside table with a _snap_ and turning to look at me with firey eyes. "I don't get what's so important about your weird chemistry and dusty old books that would ever make you consider giving up... giving up... _everything_ just because you read about it in a book!"

I glared at her for a minute before I turned on my side, pulling the covers up to my chin like it was some sort of shield between me and her. If I was honest, I didn't know how to argue with her on that. I couldn't argue with her. Because I didn't know why it was so important to me, either.

Eventually Winry seemed to forget she had been mad at me and went back to taking care of me as she had been doing before. I couldn't really say I was mad at her myself, but I didn't really feel like I could tell her what all was going on inside my head. After all, she hadn't even understood me saying I wanted to grow out my hair, so why would she understand all the complicated things I was thinking about every day? She hadn't even been able to tell me anything more than that Al just wouldn't hate me when I had worried to her in my pain-induced stupor. She couldn't really logic her way through her answer or give me any reasoning other than "because he's Al" and that I should go talk to him. Didn't she even understand how much this was all tearing me apart? I couldn't just bring it up with Al like any other conversation topic. What if he understood it as little as Winry had?

Eventually, I started being able to actually move my right hand. It was the smallest things at first, just a little finger twitch here and there, but once Winry and Pinako noticed I was moving it at all, they set me to work on exercises. Dear god, the exercises. Touch your pointer finger to your thumb. Now bend all your fingers at a ninety degree angle. Now bend them down to your palm. Now make a fist. Now just keep repeating these exercises again and again and again until you're flexing fists in your sleep. It never ended. And it felt like there wasn't any point to it either. I mean, I knew that the point was to get me so I could actually use my arm, but I couldn't see any direct outcome from what I was doing. All I had was just a vague belief that it would make me better somehow.

Sometimes Al would come in and sit and talk to me while I flexed my hand in various mind numbing ways. It was still unnerving to talk to him when he looked like..._ that_, but the voice was the same as I had always known, at least. And having him there at least made me feel better, but I couldn't help the lump of guilt that settled in my stomach every time I looked at him. I found myself avoiding looking directly at him or sometimes claiming I was tired and closing my eyes. It didn't help that I felt fairly certain that Al really did hate me, because he was constantly running off to go for walks or spend time alone. I mean, after all, he was going around a tiny town where everyone knows everyone's business when he so clearly looked not only like he was from out of town but just... different in general.

He clearly wanted to avoid me. And I couldn't think of a reason why other than he probably just hated me underneath the nice attitude on the surface. Every time he went off on his own while I was stuck in the stupid bed, I felt myself lose a bit more of my mind. It drove me crazy thinking about what he might think about me, if he would even want anything to do with me even if I did manage to get his body back, what he might say to me if he wasn't such a freaking nice person... Pointer finger to thumb. Ninety degree angle. Down to palm. Make a fist. Again and again and again I ran my brain through the same maddening circles as I desperately wondered about Al and felt myself suffocating under my own guilt. I needed something to do, anything that required a little more focus than just flexing my fingers again and again. I desperately needed to feel like I wasn't just a worthless lump in a bed.

Time kept jumping around through all of this because it forgets to exist when its buddy pain comes to town. Here I'd made the rookie mistake of thinking that the pain would start dying down after I got past the first round of recovery and I could start moving, but oh no. It was still there. That was about the time that I started realizing... This was my life now. Pain was always just going to be lurking in a corner, stealing time from me and throwing my life out of balance whenever it felt like it.

Anyway, time stopped existing, and my brain jumped back to the automail surgery, of all things. As if that was a part of my life I needed to live through twice. Thanks, brain. But my brain focused on a stupid little detail. Winry's head over me as she worked, her hair hanging in a braid. Didn't she normally wear a ponytail? Why had she suddenly decided to go for a braid? It stuck in my head for some reason, maybe because I had remembered how much my mom had liked braiding my hair. So I ended up asking her about it the next time she checked on me.

"My hair?" she blinked as she pulled off my covers and replaced them with new ones. "I always wear a braid when we're doing automail surgery. It keeps my hair out of the way. Doesn't get caught on automail parts and all that. Or... infecting an open wound or something."

For some reason, I couldn't get it out of my head. Here my mom had braided my hair again and again when I was little, but I had no idea how to actually do a braid myself. It just wasn't something that got taught to little boys, and yet somehow little girls all learned it when I wasn't looking. It almost seemed like... magic, to be able to take three separate things and unite them into one.

No, not magic, alchemy. Braiding was taking three things and transforming them into one new thing. It had the equivalent exchange and everything. Braiding was a form of alchemy. I grabbed Winry's arm before she slipped out of the room with the dirty sheets. "Could you teach me?"

She blinked at me again. "What, how to braid?"

I nodded. Damn it all, she wasn't understanding again. Hell, I wasn't even understanding. But something about braiding seemed important somehow. I needed to know how to do it. I had to understand this weird magic-alchemy somehow. It felt like a huge gap in my education that I had never been taught this just because I was a boy.

"I... I need something to do with my hands," I croaked, trying to give any sort of believable excuse. "I'm just so... bored. And braiding would be good practice for my hand, right?"

Winry's gaze softened a little, and she gave me a sad sort of smile. Damn it all, she was pitying me. Well, at least it was mildly better than her just snapping at me in confusion. I couldn't stand her not understanding why I needed the random things I needed. Even I didn't understand why I needed some of the things I needed. At least with pity, she didn't give me the sass and attitude, and I would actually get what I needed. So... good enough.

She told me to wait while she took the sheets away and came back with some ribbon. Apparently, once I learned the method for braiding, it was a really freaking easy process. It was just always the outermost ribbon getting moved to the center, alternating between left and right. Winry had even brought me three different colors of ribbon so I could see exactly how they twisted around one another. Once I actually had the basic idea down, she left me to my braiding while she went to finish the laundry she had started.

And so began my weird braiding obsession that no one could explain. Even I couldn't explain it, but it was a hell of a lot better than flexing my hand in weird ways for what seemed like no reason. I braided while I talked to Al, and it didn't seem so awkward that I was looking at the braid while I worked instead of making eye contact with him. I braided while Winry fussed over me and made sure I was comfortable. I braided even while I started doing more stupid flexing exercises with my foot. The flexing exercises never seemed to end, but at least now I had something to occupy me while I did them.

My brain seemed to naturally want to sort of chant while it worked. First it was the directions. Right, left, right, left, right, left. But something about a rhythm of twos felt weird when I was working in threes, so I started switching to saying the colors of the ribbons in my head as I moved them. Red, black, white, red, black, white, red, black, white.

I guess after a while, I had been braiding so long that my thoughts just started coming to me in threes and naturally falling in time with the braid I was doing at the time. Me, Al, mom, me, Al, mom, me, Al, mom. That one got depressing after a while, so I eventually convinced my brain to trade out mom with Winry. I still wanted to keep inserting mom into the braid though, since one syllable was better than two.

And it seemed like as I braided together these scraps of Me, Al, Mom, Me, Al, Mo-Win, Me Al, Win, it seemed to have the same effect in real life. Slowly the distance that had appeared between Al and I started to knit itself back together and heal. Winry started to get a bit closer too, but not in the same way Al and I were. I didn't like being superstitious, but part of my brain said it was because I kept accidentally switching between whether it should be her or mom in the braid.

When I started being able to actually take my first steps with automail, it meant I suddenly had to set my braiding habit aside for much longer than I was used to. After all, I wasn't good enough at walking yet that I could handle doing anything with my hands while I walked. But then when I would finish the twenty or so minutes of walking practice, I would settle right back into bed with my three ribbons. Twenty minutes. I could only handle twenty minutes of walking, and even then, it feel like my legs were on fire, and I sweat enough to fill a couple buckets. Twenty minutes was even more than what Pinako and Winry were advising me to do, but damn. I wasn't going to walk for five minutes just so I could settle back into bed for the rest of the day. What did they even expect me to do with all this time?

I hated everything about my entire routine. It was like being sick, but it never ended. If I was never sick again, it would be too soon.

At least Al seemed to be hanging around more and more, so I could occupy myself more with talking to him. There wasn't really much happening other than my whole automail ordeal, but lack of topics had never been something to deter Al from friendly chatter. He told me about things he had seen while wandering around outside, other patients that had stopped through the house, or even just telling me stories. Sometimes I had trouble keeping myself awake and I would accidentally doze off, which always made me feel terrible. After all, what did I even have to be tired from? All I was doing all day was stupid flexing exercises and twenty minutes of walking. It was hardly a full day's worth of work, but somehow I always felt like I had been working for a week straight without sleep.

And every time after I had accidentally dozed off, I found a blanket gently tucked in around me, the lights turned off. At first I thought it must have been more of Winry's fussing, but then I realized that Al had stopped leaving the room at some point. He was just staying there through the night, right across from my bed. I didn't really remember when he had started doing it, but I knew that he had once made excuses and gone off to hide in the hall every night. He had never really explained why to me, but I figured it was the whole hating me thing. I mean, why stick around someone you can't stand when you're going to have to spend a whole night with him while he's sleeping. And you're not. Because of what he did to you. Seemed like a pretty clear reason to me. But he had stopped doing that. Was he suddenly more okay with me?

Then one night, I was at that weird point of sleep where I wasn't quite asleep, but I wasn't fully awake either. That weird state where the whole world is kind of fuzzy and soft and it's hard to think in full coherent thoughts. I probably would have just dozed off without much second thought from there if I hadn't felt metal brush against my cheek as a blanket was pulled over me. Winry didn't have metal like that on her hands. I blinked my eyes open.

"Al?"

"Oh." He froze in the middle of smoothing out the blanket. "I'm sorry. I thought you were asleep."

"S'okay," I mumbled, grabbing the blanket and hugging it a little closer. My eyes slid shut again. "Mm mostly asleep."

Al made a sound like he was chuckling at me, though I wasn't sure what exactly was so funny. Still, it was good to hear him laughing again, even if it was a weaker laugh. I slid my eyes open again. "You stayed."

"I stay every night, you goof."

I squinted at him. "Why?"

"Because you asked me to, and I love you," Al said simply. He then pat my shoulder and went back to his usual spot across the room. "Just go to sleep, Brother. You need the rest."

"No, I don't," I muttered, but my eyes had already slid shut again. I wanted to add something about how I wasn't even doing anything day after day, but I had already started mostly dozing off again.

But something in my brain clicked about how Al had said he stayed because he loved me. I didn't remember asking him to stay. It must have been another case of me being only slightly awake. But he had stayed every night since then just because he loved me. Was it possible to love and hate someone at the same time? Actually, yes. I knew exactly what that was like, because that was about how I felt about our dad. But still, loving and hating me at the same time was still better than only hating me. As long as he still loved me, even just a little bit, everything was okay. So I started reassuring myself by looking for him in the middle of the night. If Al was there, things were okay. If he had stayed, he still loved me at least a little bit.

Apparently I started getting so intent on reassuring myself that he was there that I sometimes even started calling out for him. I found this out because one night I was gently pushed awake only to see Al above me.

"I think you were having a nightmare," he said softly. "You kept calling for me."

"Oh." Sometimes in my worst nightmares, I was stuck wandering through a labyrinth world, looking for Al but never managing to find him. Maybe because it was a good combination of things I had already experienced along with the whole idea that Al being nearby meant he loved me.

Al headed back to the other side of the room. I almost wanted to beg him to stay nearby, but I wasn't sure that the weak imitation of physical affection that his current body was capable of would actually end up comforting either of us. But I was also terrified of feeling alone again.

"Uh, Al?"

"Yeah?"

"Could you, uh..." I struggled for an idea. I just wanted to be able to fall asleep without being scared of Al disappearing on me or something. Maybe if he just kept talking so I would know he was still there. "Uh, tell me one of your stories?"

Al sighed. "I don't really feel capable of making up a story right now."

"Well, you could just turn on the light and read one," I said, sitting up a little. "There are loads of books in the other room. And I don't mind the light."

The was a thick silence in the air, broken only by the creak that was probably Al shifting. Did he just not want to interact with me? Dear god, did he really just want to find an excuse to get away? Had I done something wrong? Maybe I was coming across as too needy, and he didn't like me needing things when he needed so much more. I mean really, how obnoxious is it to comfort someone else to sleep when you can't even sleep yourself? Yeah, that had to be it.

"Well, um..." There was another creak. "I'm, uh... I'm not very good at reading yet."

I frowned. I almost wanted to flick on a light just so I could see what he was doing better, but then I realized I wouldn't get to see any facial expressions no matter how much I flooded the room with light. "What are you talking about, Al? You've been reading for years."

"Yeah..." Al gave what seemed like a weak attempt at a chuckle. "In my old body... In this one I just... I keep having trouble focusing, and the words keep going blurry, and... Well, I would say it gives me a headache, but..." He trailed off without finishing the thought. Neither of us really wanted to hear it spoken aloud anyway. _But how can I have a headache if I'm in a body that doesn't experience pain?_ Rather than focusing on that, I decided to focus on the other half of the problem. No books. What kind of world was my poor baby brother supposed to live in if reading was a struggle? Nope, that wouldn't do at all.

"Well," I said with a shrug. "I don't feel like sleeping right now. I could read aloud for both of us if you want."

There was a moment of hesitation before Al gave a fairly bright, "Really?"

"Sure. Just go grab me a book. It's not like I can walk out out there to get it myself," I said with a bitter chuckle as I glanced down at the bedsheets. "Whatever book you want, I don't care."

Al ended up picking out this book that was about a boy who traveled back in time to try and stop his home from burning down, but when he saved the house, it ended up messing up his whole future. The more he tried to fix the past, the more muddled the future became. Eventually the boy was constantly jumping between the past and the future from trying to fix everything. It hit a lot closer to home than I thought when Al had first brought me the book. Granted, Al probably wouldn't have picked the book in the first place if he'd known it would hit me kind of hard. Still, I probably needed it. And it was comforting in its own way, to see that someone else was struggling just as much as me with the same kind of problem. I wasn't some sort of weirdo who couldn't handle anything, it was just a really hard problem that apparently anyone would struggle with.

I read that book aloud to Al every night for a week until we finished it. Even after we had finished the book, we sat and talked about it. It seemed to be weighing on Al's mind just as much as it was weighing on mine, and we discussed all kinds of different points in our past and how changing them would affect our futures. Minus, of course, the most obvious point to change. As we talked, I braided again, and I found my mantra changing from names to a chant of Past, present, future, Past, present, future, Past, present, future.

And then, it clicked. That was it. That was the key. Time wasn't some sort of straight line, it was a braid! That was why trying to mess with the past would mess up the future! Past, present, and future were all woven around each other, and moving any of them moved all of them. That was the alchemical concept of Time I had been missing before. But it was apparently one of those alchemical concepts that are ridiculously difficult to explain, because when I tried telling my eureka moment to Al, he just gave me a deadpan, "...Right."

Granted, I wasn't entirely used to reading his tone without facial expression, so it could have been that I was finally understanding some sort of basic concept that Al had known for years and he was surprised it had taken me that long to understand. But it felt better to believe that he had no idea what I was trying to explain.

Something about understanding that also made it so I was suddenly a lot more able to deal with even the stupid things like flexing exercises. I couldn't quite put my finger on how to explain it, but feeling like I better understood how time worked made me feel more hopeful. Yeah, my current time was painful and obnoxious, but it was also braided together with a future where I didn't have to do flexing exercises and I was just used to my new arm and leg. I could exist in my current timeline and the future at the same time, because they were braided around each other. Maybe that was why my brain just kept jumping back to the past as if it was currently happening. Maybe my brain just understood time better than I did.

Something about all of that even made it easier for me to handle my walking exercises. When it started getting to be too difficult or painful, I would just picture a time someday where it wouldn't be so difficult or painful, and suddenly things would feel possible again. I thought maybe it was something that only I was noticing, but then Pinako pointed out that I was actually spending a few more minutes every day on walking than I had been doing in the past. And then another day, while Al was watching me walk back and forth between those stupid rails, he offhandedly commented, "Gee Brother, you're looking a lot more spirited."

Something about that in particular stuck with me for some reason, and it kept rattling around in my head for days afterward. At some point, it got abbreviated even while I braided until my brain was giving me a chant or "spirit, spirit, spirit, spirit," while I braided. Then I looked up at Al while he talked, and was suddenly reminded of the armor body. And the chant in my head changed to "body, spirit, body, spirit, body, spirit," like there was some sort of argument happening in my head. Three. I needed a pattern of three, not two. I glanced up at Al again.

_Soul._

Almost instantly, my braid fell into a pattern of "Body, spirit, soul, body spirit, soul, body, spirit soul." And something inside my head clicked into place, like I had finally managed to make sense of the world. Al kept chattering, completely oblivious to the epiphany I was having.

All this time, I had been going along on the vaguest hope that maybe it would be possible to get Al back to his body. It was more a prayer than any actual belief. _Please, please, let it be possible for me to fix this somehow._ But this put a faith in me I hadn't had before. The body, soul, and spirit were connected the same way as time, all tied and connected to one another in a way they couldn't be separated. Life was the alchemy that happened when all three were braided together. Al's body had to be possible to get back, _because_ his soul and spirit clearly still existed, and those were still tied to his body.

"Brother, are you okay?"

I glanced up. It appeared that Al had finally noticed the state I was in. I could feel a hint of tears at the corner of my eyes.

"It's possible," I croaked. "I can totally do this."

Al's shoulders relaxed. I hadn't even realized he had been tensed. "Of course you can," he said softly. "You're Ed, you can do..." he paused. Here I'd been ready to protest him saying his usual line of saying I could do anything. Al sighed. "You can do so much more than you give yourself credit for."

Well, I couldn't argue with it when he said it that way. I took a breath and looked down at the ribbon braid in my lap. It was a promise. A glimmer of hope after a sea of darkness. _We could do this._

After that, the rest of my recovery started to get almost... pleasant, in its own way. There was still lots of pain and mind numbing exercises, of course, but there was also hope now. Hope that hadn't been there in the same way before things had started clicking for me. I kept braiding, and Al and I started falling into this comfortable routine. No matter what I needed to do for my physical therapy, he was there, talking, encouraging, and sometimes even catching me.

My hair kept growing, despite Winry and Pinako constantly bugging me to cut it. Al didn't bring it up for some reason, but I was grateful he wasn't pushing me as well. It was already annoying enough to constantly be arguing with the other two people in the house about it. At one point, Winry got so determined that she stormed into the room with a pair of scissors and it took me yelling at her just to make her leave. I was grateful that Al seemed to at least be on my side (whether he understood it or not), because otherwise I would have been scared Winry might try to chop all my hair off while I was sleeping. Why did it even matter so much to her what length my hair was?

For a while, my hair just kept hanging around my shoulders, because I had no idea what to do with it. I'd never really had to do anything much more with my hair than occasionally combing it. But I was beginning to realize that long hair was a bit of a nuisance. Every time I was looking down at my feet as I walked, it was there, hanging in the way. I went to turn and look at something, and there would be a curtain of blond in the way. It felt like was constantly rolling on it in my sleep. What did normal people even do to deal with long hair, anyway?

Well, ponytails. I didn't really want a ponytail though. I could still remember seeing my dad's back and his blond ponytail as he walked out the door, and I hardly wanted to look more like him than I was already cursed with. Maybe it was time to just suck it up and actually cut the darn stuff like Winry and Pinako wanted.

I was still thinking on and mentally arguing with myself over that while Al chattered at me and I braided. Braiding was at least still comforting, and it helped me get some of my thoughts in order. I didn't really want to cut my hair, but I still couldn't think of any solution other than a stupid ponytail.

"Are you okay, Brother?"

"Huh?" I glanced up and saw Al was looking at me with his head tilted to one side. He seemed to be exaggerating his body language more and more as time went on, which I guessed was his way of making up for not being able to have subtle facial expressions.

"You just seemed... Upset, I guess."

"Oh," I went back to my ribbon braid. "No, I'm fine, I just-"

I yanked on one of the ribbons to braid it, and that was apparently the last straw for the braid. After months of being braided and unbraided and braided and frayed within an inch of its life, the ribbon finally decided it'd had enough and gave up with a snap. It felt like something snapped in me too. Sure, it was just a stupid ribbon, but it had been the stupid ribbon that had been helping me stay sane for so long. I stared at in in silent shock for a minute, not even fully comprehending it had broken. I tried to shove what was left of the white ribbon into the braid, but it was too short and fell out immediately. A hot anger rose in me. Here I was, finally starting to recover from this stupid automail surgery, and everything just had to start going wrong on me _now_?

"Stupid ribbon! Stupid braid!" I let out at roar and threw the ribbon braid across the room. The piece of cardboard it had been attached to hit the wall and then fell down about a foot away from Al. He glanced down at it and then up at me.

"Whoa, what?"

I didn't even know how to put into words everything that was going through my brain. All I could focus on was how it felt like everything was completely falling apart just because I couldn't keep doing my ridiculous little ribbon braid. I grunted at Al and crossed my arms, looking down at the bed. There was a moment of silence, then a creak, and then the bed sagging as I felt Al sitting down next to me.

"Do you want me to get you more ribbon?"

"No!" I threw my hands in the air. "_That _was my ribbon! That was the one that was making everything better, and there's that, and the hair, and-" I grunted again and clenched my hands. I wasn't sure what to do with them if I wasn't braiding. There was a moment of silence, and I didn't even dare to look at Al. I wasn't even sure if he honestly accepted my long hair or just didn't want to fight with me over it like Winry did.

"You know," Al said after a minute. "You could always... Braid your hair? It'd solve two problems at once."

"What?" I scoffed and glanced up at him. "No. Only girls braid their hair."

"You already have long hair, Ed," Al said with something that was either a chuckle or a scoff. Maybe both. I couldn't tell when I couldn't see whether he was smiling or not. "I think you should be past the point of worrying what's girly or not."

I huffed at him. "Plenty of guys have long hair." I sighed and uncrossed my arms. It was something kind of ridiculous to be so upset about though. Darn Al for always making me feel like a toddler throwing a temper tantrum. "I'm probably just cranky because I'm tired. It doesn't matter. I'll deal with it in the morning."

"Okay," Al said as I turned on my side and burrowed into the blankets and pillows. He helped to tuck me in, and then went back to his usual spot on the other side of the room.

Still, something about his suggestion stuck with me and I couldn't get it out of my head as I drifted off to sleep. Why not braid my hair? Because I didn't want to, that's why? But really, why not? Eventually I didn't have the energy to keep arguing with myself and as I fell asleep, it was like I could hear my mom talking to me, arguing with me when I didn't have the energy to do it myself.

_"_Please_ let mommy braid your hair!"_

_"Only girls braid their hair." _

_"Excuse me, what's wrong with looking like a girl?"_

My sleep after that was restless, not the kind of dreams that can be put into a coherent string. Mostly I dreamed of the Gate, and my mom, and Al, and braids weaving in and out of all of that, and my own untied hair reaching around from behind me to choke me. I woke up with a gasp.

Mom had always wished I would grow my hair out so she could braid it. Braids had kept me sane, and tied me and Al back together when it felt like we were ripping apart. Braids had given me hope when I didn't even know how badly I'd needed it. Who freaking cared if only girls braided their hair? Braids were my _life_. I reached behind me, almost in a panicked daze, and started twisting bits of my hair around each other.

For the record, I don't recommend starting with your own hair as the first hair your braid with automail. Hair is nasty and loves to get into pretty much every single joint of automail hands. It's not a fun time. Which I found out pretty quickly and my hand got into a tangled mess with my hair, causing me to let out a pained yelp.

"What?" Al suddenly realized I was actually awake and came over to see what I was struggling with.

"My hair," I croaked. "My hand is stuck in my hair."

"Hang on, let me go get Winry," Al said before leaving the room. Darn his big fingers.

I had to have quite the argument with Winry that I wanted my hair detangled rather than all just cut off. She still seemed to be leaning towards cutting it all off anyway because she didn't want to be awake at two in the morning just to detangle my hair. At least winry was willing to listen to me, which was also probably why Al had fetched her. Pinako wouldn't have cared and just cut it all off. Two in the morning is two in the morning, and not the time to be untangling hair.

It took practice (and for a while, gloves to cover the joints in my hand), but eventually I learned how to braid my own hair, even with automail. In some ways, it was better than the ribbon ever could have been, because I was able to keep that braid with me all the time.

It became so normal to me that I stopped thinking about it after a while. I didn't really think about it when I twisted my hair into a fresh braid before beginning a sparring session with Al, or when I took it out while I slept so it didn't tug on my scalp all night. And I certainly wasn't thinking about it when I stepped off the train and saw Roy Mustang in the flesh again for the first time in a year.

"What's with the braid?" he said, frowning at me with a smirk. My hand flew back to my hair, suddenly remembering it was there. How could I even explain all the reasons behind that one choice? I hadn't even spent time thinking about what I would say when people asked me about it, even though it seemed like an obvious question to prepare for in hindsight.

"I... Uh... It's..."

"It's hardly regulation," Mustang said, stepping in with a scoff. I frowned.

"They'll have to burn it off me," I growled. He stared at me for a minute, the edge of his mouth twitching like he was going to laugh.

"Well, State Alchemists are given more room with rules anyway," he said with a wave of his hand. "Especially when they're growing their hair out as a _spiritual practice for their alchemy_." I licked my lips and nodded with a frown.

It was the excuse I used from then on if anyone asked me about my hair. Besides, it wasn't wrong. It was a spiritual practice for me, just not the same sort of spiritual practices everyone else was used to. The braid constantly rubbing the back of my neck reminded me of who I was. Feeling it constantly there reminded me of everything that was important. That it was going to be possible to help Al. That life was connected in ways I couldn't always understand.

And most importantly... That mom wasn't gone. Not completely.

Sometimes when I braided my hair in the morning, I would close my eyes and pretend it was my mom braiding my hair just like she'd done when I was little. I liked to picture how pleased she would be with me having long hair to braid. _See mom? I grew my hair out, just like you always wanted. _

I didn't like believing too much in spiritual things, not after everything I'd been through. But... sometimes I liked to picture that if there was some sort of afterlife, when I eventually died, I would be met by my mom, wiggling her fingers at me and begging me to let her braid my hair.

* * *

**Uh... What am I doing? When was the last time I uploaded here? 2011? 2012? What year is it? **

**For real though, I've been occasionally posting fanfic stuff, just under my other username, TheRogueParadox. And... Publishing. A fair amount of publishing. But I got this random idea hitting me at one point, thought it would be a simple short story... And eight thousand words later, here we are, lol. Anyway, I thought it would be a cool writer version of the decade comparison that's been going around. I first started publishing FMA stories way back in 2006 on here, and I think my writing skill has really grown and changed since then. Along with a lot of other things that have changed... My relationship status, my home state, my gender... But that's another story. **

**Anyway, thanks for still being around to read this. Here's to hopefully another ten years of writing, and Happy Holidays and Happy New Year to all of you!**


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